'Killer Bees' Documentary Picked Up By Film Distributor Gravitas Productions, Will Be Released To Download This Summer

Those who weren’t able to see “Killer Bees” at the Hamptons International Film Festival back in October will have the opportunity to do so this summer.Brothers Benjamin and Orson Cummings, the Bridgehampton natives who wrote, directed and co-produced the documentary about the Bridgehampton boys basketball team, announced via their website, killerbeesmovie.com, on January 19 that Gravitas Ventures, a well-known and respected film distributor, picked up their film and will release it this August on video-on-demand platforms. Initially, Orson Cummings explained, “Killer Bees” will be available to download on iTunes—a specific date has not been released just yet—and depending on how well it does there, it could be picked up by streaming services, such as Netflix and Hulu.John Sloss, founder of Cinetic Media and a film sales agent, was in charge of landing the deal with Gravitas Ventures, and Orson Cummings said Sloss did a fantastic, and relatively quick, job in finding a good fit for the doc.“He loved the movie and also played basketball, so basketball continues to be a huge asset,” he said. “[Gravitas] is a great company. They not only put out good movies but they’re well respected and they take care of their films, and whenever you hand over your film you want it to be a with a company that cares and loves film and works with you to try to and get the film seen. We’re psyched.”It helped that Sports Illustrated included “Killer Bees” in its top sports documentaries of 2017 list, which only included six movies total, along with films such as “Icarus” and “What Carter Lost,” which is part of ESPN’s award-winning 30 for 30 documentary series. Cummings said that Shaquille O’Neal, an associate producer on the film, also had a big hand in spreading the word on the movie—the NBA Hall of Famer pushed rave reviews of the documentary on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, in October.“Killer Bees” will be showing in its second film festival, the Santa Barbara Film Festival, this weekend and the Cummings Brothers are hoping that it will kick off a strong run on the West Coast.“A lot of festivals have reached out to us and there will definitely be some more that we’ll be entering. We got a very good word of mouth from the Hamptons Film Festival from our great showing there and hopefully we can follow that lead and, of course, we’re happy to have the film seen,” Cummings said. “Santa Barbara is a fantastic film festival and we’re excited to be a part of it.”